IN THIS ISSUE: This week, Microsoft announced the Incremental Service Model for automatic notification of SQL Server hotfix Cumulative Updates. But surprisingly, this new service seems shrouded in mystery, and the announcement raises more questions than it answers.

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Last week, my press contacts at Microsoft told me about the company’s new Incremental Servicing Model for SQL Server, a new process for customers to receive scheduled SQL Server hotfix updates that is scheduled to launch April 16. The name and the brief description sure sounded intriguing. But, try as I might, I haven’t been able to get much in the way of real information about what this new initiative really means to customers.Read the full article.

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Q&A: Executing Queries on Remote Servers by Microsoft’s SQL Server Development Team

Q. I have two servers, and I want to call a stored procedure with the server name as the parameter and have the stored procedure's T-SQL query run against the appropriate server, as in the following code:

How do I execute the procedure's T-SQL query on the correct server by using the server parameter (the ## part of the object name) and without converting the T-SQL code to a string or using an EXECUTE statement? Does SQL Server provide an object for server name, such as ObjectReference in the statement

SELECT * FROM ObjectReference(@prmServer) .pubs.dbo.Titles

that I can use in place of the server's name? Or can I map @prmServer to an alias such as TempServer, as in

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PUZZLED BY T-SQL: Simplified End-of-Period Calculations In this week’s blog, Itzik Ben-Gan shares a simplified way to perform an end-of-period calculation. This useful solution was sent to Itzik by reader Peter Larsson. Check out the new solution and post your input today.

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